The Hindu Temple

Stella Kramrisch was an art historian specializing in Indian art and architecture, and this University of Calcutta Press book is her classic scholarly study of Hindu temple architecture, covering the sthapati and shilpi craftsman roles and the shilpa shastra textual tradition that governs temple design. Its strength is that it remains a standard foundational reference in the field decades after publication, combining close reading of the Sanskrit architectural treatises with direct study of actual temple structures. Its limit is its age, published in 1946, later archaeological and art historical scholarship has refined and in places revised some of Kramrisch's specific readings, so a claim needing current scholarly consensus on a contested architectural point should be checked against more recent scholarship alongside this classic study.